New Football Boss

(XU JIAJUN)

Cai Zhenhua has taken over as the highest-ranking official in charge of football in China's sports governing body, the General Administration of Sport (GAS). He replaced 61-year-old Cui Dalin, who has recently retired.

At a meeting on October 25, Cai called for more efforts to burnish the game's image.

A sweeping crackdown on corruption in China's football led to the arrest of a handful of officials, referees and club executives earlier this year, including three former vice chairmen of the China Football Association.

Cai, 49, is a former table tennis world champion. He was appointed head coach of China's men's table tennis team in 1991 and was promoted to head coach of the national team in 1997. Before he was named director of the Table Tennis Administrative Center of GAS in 2004, he had led his players to nearly 40 titles in major international competitions including the World Championships, Olympic Games and World Cup events. He is considered an important contributor to China's international leadership in table tennis since the late 1990s. In 2005, Cai was appointed assistant minister of GAS, and two years later appointed vice minister.

Silver Medallist

(ZENG YI)

On October 22, Jiang Yuyuan won a silver medal in the women's all-around competition at the 2010 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships, with a total score of 59.998. Women's individual all-around competition is the only event in which Chinese gymnasts haven't taken top place in major international competitions. Before Jiang's achievement, the best performances were the third places secured by Liu Xuan, Zhang Nan and Yang Yilin at World Champions and Olympic Games.

Jiang, born on November 1, 1991, joined the national team in 2006 and began to serve as its captain earlier this year. She made her international debut at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in 2007, for the silver-medal winning Chinese team in the women's team competition.

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Jiang helped the Chinese team to win the team gold medal. Individually, she finished sixth in the all-around event and fourth in the floor exercise event.

Young Success

(FILE)

Ma Huateng (Pony Ma), who created instant-messaging software QQ, ranks seventh on this year's Fortune magazine's "40 Under 40" rankings of the hottest rising stars in business. Last year, he was in 18th place.

Fortune said Ma, 39, was "one of the wealthiest but most low-key men in China."

Ma graduated from the Computer Department at Shenzhen University in 1993. In following years, he worked for Runxun Communications Development Co. Ltd., eventually becoming director of the R&D department. In 1998, by inventing QQ, now China's most-used chat software with more than 500 million active users, he founded the Tencent Computer System Co. Ltd. Leading China's online game and instant message markets, Ma's company had revenue of $1.3 billion in the first six months of this year, up 65 percent from 2009. He is 249th in Forbes' 2010 List of the World's Richest and sixth on the Forbes' China Rich List.